


Just Another Work Song

by gremlinny



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Multi, and it turned into this, bisexual disaster jack kelly, gay disaster crutchie morris, gay disaster david jacobs, i just wanted to talk about Hands, i wrote this with no specific goal in mind, they are all so in love and it kills me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 02:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20074777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gremlinny/pseuds/gremlinny
Summary: When he feels like he can’t hold himself up, there’s others to do it for him.





	Just Another Work Song

**Author's Note:**

> a proper Threes The Day fic, as promised. TW for mentions of blood, sickness, etc.  
Best to imagine it with the 92sies characters, but Do As You Please.

Crutchie’s hands are not soft.

His palms are sweaty from the summer heat, smeared with the ink that had rubbed off the newspapers he’d been selling. The bends of his fingers are knotted and calloused and cracked, with thickened skin after years of friction against the old wooden crutch he’d got his nickname from. He picks at his fingernails, at his cuticles, and they bleed and bleed.

Rub some dirt on it, the other boys joke, and that’s how Crutchie got here in the first place. Dirty hands touch other dirty hands that start touching mouths and noses and food and water, and dirty hands carried Crutchie to the hospital when he was six years old and couldn’t breathe, and dirty hands are why the infection went from his lungs to his spine to his right leg. Dirty hands just lead to more dirty hands, which leads to calloused hands and bleeding hands and, on some days—on bad days— hands that shake with the effort of holding himself up.

On those days, it’s other hands that hold him up. 

On David’s right hand, there’s a knot on his middle finger, from years of writing. Graphite on the side of his hand from where it touches his schoolwork as he writes, ink on his arms from selling papers. But his hands are soft. He hadn’t had to work in the same way the Newsies do, the same way all the kids in sweatshops work, and his hands are soft. But these days, more recently, there’s papercuts on his fingertips and sweat on his brow. David’s hands are steady and his arms are strong, and on bad days he’ll let Crutchie lean on him without shame.

Jack’s hands are rough like Crutchie’s hands are. Thick skin and calluses, the hands of working boys. There’s paint and charcoal beneath his fingernails, and everything he touches gets a mark of pigment to it. His fingers are quick and nimble, perfect for taking things nobody will notice go missing. On the first four knuckles of both hands, there’s blood and bruises and scars from fights with thugs or cops, but when it comes to the other newsboys, his touch is always gentle. Jack is always discreet in the ways he offers help, but it never goes unnoticed by Crutchie.

Crutchie’s hands are not soft.

But his heart is. And it always will be, especially for Jack Kelly and David Jacobs.


End file.
